Encouraged by the advice I got at yesterdays EE-session I try to put down the problems I have with the job at the moment.
I am not employed but working as a freelancer mainly 2 days a week and at home. Since I always have some kind of blockade when I am in this mood my writing will be a little bumpy I assume.
I started working for her more than a year ago and at the beginning I was very enthusiastic. I came to her via a common friend who recommended me to her for the reason that we both were doing ketogenic diet and it seemed to fit. When I first met her I saw a lot of books on the table that confirmed me that we had something in common. It all started slow, I had no job description, merely talking about the world and how to see it. In a way it was to find out in what way I could be helpful for her, I assume.
Her plan was to open a small shop where she would sell her product (which is a good and helpful one), as well as creating a meeting place for people, something that I always wanted, too. It should be a place to discuss things and so creating a good and helpful energy. At least that was my intention which seemed to go along with her plans to have discussions about problems in medicine or philosophy or even literature (she is a doctor in medicine but did not practice for more than 20 years, mainly focussing on the product she had developed). She also has a trading company that she mainly gets the money from.
It started good at the beginning but then came the lockdown.
I will stop here for a moment in describing the history but telling more of her personality. She seems to be a highly intelligent person, did her medical degree with a left hand ( in German that means very easily), worked in a pharmaceutical area as well as a doctor in a Civil War in Near East and did a lot of other things, with very hard downs in her life, too. She has a very good recognition what is going on in the world, also trying to bring peaceful wording into medicine language (not fighting against the virus i.e. but accepting it as a thing that has been in the world for a long time and we have to arrange with it.) But on the other hand she is a fighter.
My problem now is that I feel I cannot go along with her anymore. It all started when she got the Corona Virus in November (I did not get it, although we were on very close contacts always). She got ill because she was overdoing herself in an extreme way. Not sleeping, traveling, hard working etc. She is a person who obviously never comes to a rest and is very very often at the edge and desperate and emotional down. On the other hand she can be nice, too. Now I assume that is only the case when she needs you. But isn't that normal in business?
When I called her during her illness I got back such an emotional outburst that I obviously quitted internally. She always had her outbursts during these months and normally I can handle those things, although very often I had to recover the next day when I was back home. Very often it was like she talked about her problems, I tried to figure out what could be helpful for her and she was feeling better when she left. For a time this was okay for me, because the job brought me back to being creative again, something I missed during the last years, having ideas, making posters and flyers, talking to people and so on, using my brain again. But at that time it was too much.
I decided over Christmas time to stay at home until January 8, there was no need to be in the shop and I needed time to recover and to think about life. Meanwhile she worked on creating her life stream and when we met again I felt that there was something, that she did not like me any more. She told me very subtile to go back to my old job again. Something that hurts me much. I had supported her through her downs, more acting like a Psychologist. In a way it feels like losing a close relationship and I am sad about that and want to have back that good feelings again we had through all those months of the hard times.
I think I will have to quit that connection, because it damages me. I cannot work with people who when they are upset say things like: "All the elder people should be killed" and always ranting about people who are fat etc.. I also feel that she now wants my brain. If I do not see things the way she does it, she cuts me off, also saying: "Who is not with me, will have to leave!"
It is a little bit difficult, because at the moment I need her laptop to be connected to the internet and also there is another dependency concerning my official living address which I cannot change rapidly.
Today I will go to the shop, probably meeting her and try to find out how it will go on. What bothers me most is that during the last week I lost my "inner light".
On the other hand I had some very heartwarming phone calls with friends to whom I talked about my situation.
I am saying to myself: Be rational, you cannot work there anymore and as always in your life something new will turn up. But it is a little bit hard at the moment and I don't know how to get out safely. because my clearness is gone away and I feel like being lame.
Thank you again for encouraging me to open this thread!!!
. I was probably staying long at work back then. I noticed through the years that in every job I do I have at least one superior or boss with whom I don't function well. That person is very dominant, asks too much of you and doesn't do his or her job too well imo. That's one of the reasons I change jobs so often.
I don't want to go into details how she didn't even tell me what I need to do at work or what's my schedule, completely unimportant now. I usually get angry at those incompetent people that shouldn't be at this position at all blablabla but I was tired of going again through the same thing so I was praying to have a better understanding of my boss and the whole situation.